How To Make Your Company Scale

Shane Reiser was kind enough to give me the opportunity to speak at Startup Weekend NYC last Friday. The subject of my talk was something I call Data Synergy, which I believe is often the key barrier built by information companies.

The core concept behind the concept of data synergy is that when data is used properly each incremental unit of a type of data makes a service more valuable for other users. 1 + 1 > 2.

This dynamic is of critical importance for information companies as it enables them to create increasing customer value that can given them a competitive advantage and ultimately barriers as they scale. Building barriers enables companies to own rather than share markets, making for bigger exit opportunities.

While this general property is well known and discussed with network effects, I have found many entrepreneurs have not focused on creating data synergy out of activity, description or subjective data (even though there are plenty of examples of each in the market today). As a result, my goal in giving this talk is to help entrepreneurs bring this particular issue into focus and make it a structured part of their brainstorming & business planning.

Creating this dynamic can make this difference between a big and small outcome. For some entrepreneurs their existing models are designed to create data synergy, but they haven’t yet harnessed the power of this opportunity.

I have included my slides from the talk below. The presentation is designed to help you:

1. Understand what makes IT companies scalable,

2. Structure your thinking about how to find ways to make your business idea scalable,

3. Identify the right financing strategy.

Mark Peter Davis is a New York City VC and member of the DFJ Gotham Ventures team. This post originally appeared on his blog, Get Venture, and it is republished here with permission.